directions out of Aspie toward NT functioning?

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I don't understand. Reach back to what? You cannot "reach back" to something which has not existed in the first place. I have always been living with Asperger's. I have never developed this "NT functioning" you are writing about, so there was nothing to discard. It is not like I was given a NT instruction set at birth and decided "meh, that's stupid, I'll rather do things Aspie way".

Switch off the Aspie analysing? You mean - switch off how I perceive the world in a conscious way? Switch off the only way I've ever learned how to cope with social situations? Is it even doable? I don't have any instinctual ways of perceiving and handling social situations. Switching off "Aspie analysing" would mean to make my mind blank, absent and not reacting to other people at all.

Your post (and name of your blog) gives away that you perceive being an AS individual as a personal choice or at least something we are pre-determined for, but can willingly go deeper into, instead of it being a thing we developed with since beginning of our existence.

Sorry to break the news to you, but there's no "going back to NT". An AS person can either learn to live with who they are and embrace it or fight against it at expense of their own mental health.

If anything, more people on this forum should try to "go back to AS", because it is pretty obvious how much stress and pain masking as NT person is causing them. And I mean this not only in context of self-acceptance, but also in context of living in environment when they can just be themselves.

Yeah, we are not always able to change the latter, even if to some minor degree, but the point is - trying to go against who we truly are won't make the situation any better in the longer run.

If you are a fan of such futile battles, I have another one for you. Go ahead and tell a gay man to try go back to heterosexuality and start perceiving women as attractive

I can't remember what my AQ score was (that test seems almost meaningless in my case anyway, because it forces black-and-white answers when I feel the truth is very grey for most of the questions, and the only honest answers I could give are mostly of the form "it depends......"). But when I asked my diagnostician how severely I had ASD, she said that the scores I had for the in-depth assessment put me about halfway between not Aspie and as Aspie is it's possible to get, so I conclude I'm probably right on the mid-point. And yet I've found value in working on my functioning. In fact my tendency to look for grey rather than black-and-white (as mentioned above) is a result of such work. Once I'd found out that Aspies tend to think in black and white, I figured I'd be better off viewing any black-and-white thinking as suspicious, and pondering whether the truth might be rather more nuanced than that. I was already part of the way there because of my interest in scientific method, but the DX pushed the boat out further, and I found quite a lot of stuff in my mind that needed refining in that way.

I do not think that people with AS are worse than NT when it comes to evaluating different possibilities and outcomes. Also, take into account that scientific, tech and analytics fields/jobs tend to attract AS people, resulting in having a higher percentage of them than overall society as a whole. If anything, people with AS have better understanding of scientific method because of their ability to follow the rules they deem reasonable as well as ability to re-evaluate their views on the matter in light of a new evidence.

I am feeling like my brain is constantly running on highest gear, because I cannot stop analysing all possibilities. Every problem results in thinking about several explanations and outcomes in parallel, it is like a branching tree of statements. Sometimes it is extreme to the point I cannot act quickly enough to new occurrences when I deem that there's too little data for me to evaluate and come out with a plausible solution. I do not act based on intuition, instinct, gut feeling - you name it.

NT people tend to jump into conclusions all the time , form believs out of them and stick to them fiercely, even when presented with evidence which invalidate them. They simply ignore them or deem them to be false without any evidence to support such claim.

When I worked as business analyst I've seen situations when NT people were simply stopping researching the subject in more in-depth manner and formed opinions they sticked with and wasn't keen on changing later based on incomplete data. Most often these views weren't even the most plausible ones based on things they knew.

To using a metaphor, for me it was like seeing that there's and apple tree with the most desirable/best fruit on a top branch on the right, but NT people weren't even climbing to the very top to reach the fruit, they were stopping halfway, quite often going left, picking the fruit in given, limited area (and not even the best one, locally) even though it was clearly inferior to one I've seen in the top right, deeming it to be good enough and then telling themselves :"yes, this is the best apple on a whole tree".

When I've wrote the emails I've always tried to be several steps ahead, predicting possible questions about data I am presenting and to answer them in advance, doing the same for second tier questions if I could think of any and presenting alternate conclusions alongside with conditions which needed to be met for them to be true (I.e. I couldn't find enough data how something occurred, so I've been giving multiple explanations based on possible alternate chains of events).

NT people most often found it confusing and couldn't wrap their heads around it. They wanted simple, straightforward answers and assurance, not food for thought, blurry lines and variables.

I am scoring 45 in AQ test with enough consistency - deviation of +/-2 between tests taken at different points in time with 45 being the meaningful average. During diagnosis I've been deemed a very strong, almost model case of Asperger's with above-average levels of intelligence. This, plus looking how brilliant thinkers many people with AS are and how well they can perform analysis, I do not think that perception of things as "black and white" is anything more than a stereotype without any solid evidence to back it up.

I also do not think that it is what OP meant in his original post. I mean, it is very vague and unspecified, but it seems to me that OP believes that AS people have some way of tapping into NT-like thinking patterns, feedbacks and that these are available, just obscured by AS. But this is not how AS works at all - it develops because one does not have the NT skillset/sensory capability/feelings/intuition/reasoning to begin with and have alternate neuropsychological framework. One cannot get back to and try to use something they've never had to begin with.

Me:

AQ 28 2020
AQ 27 2021
AQ 26 2022

Seem I'm heading in the right direction.

Yes that happens to me a lot too. I guess one thing worth trying is to develop an ability to let things go. It's certainly not easy, in my case at least. I catch myself assuming I have to follow each thought to its conclusion, and whatever idea I'm considering at the time feels like it's extremely important. The same goes for many other things - if I lose an item it bugs me horribly until I find it again, regardless of how useless the item may be. If I'm reading something, I have a lot of trouble abandoning it. I've watched countless movies and TV shows to the end even though I've got bored with them halfway through, or completely lost the plot. But I suspect learning to abandon things doesn't do any harm. There's an "are you mad?" protest from my brain, as if I've just decided to jump off a cliff, but it's not usually long before I'm feeling glad I made the decision.

Interesting post, by the way. I recognised most of those observations.

I don't think you can progress out of AS, just learn some skills which can make you better performing in some areas and in turn, get more enjoyment out of some things, like socialization for example. But while NTs have these skills running at low-level, without involvement of conscious thought process, you most likely use them at high-level, trying to apply certain rule sets to given situations and have to "flex your mind". This is of course, much more challenging, stressful and draining for yourself.

I also think that you may have a mixed performance levels when it comes to NT skill set - that is, some things are probably way better developed than others, placing you low on AS scale, but you may still face issues in key areas which matter the most when interacting with other people or daily situations.

After all, how we function in society is sum of all our parts - from overall level of intelligence, through knowledge, social conventions awareness, sense of humor, down to physical traits like personal hygiene, how we dress and so on.

I do not know in which areas you see yourself as disadvantaged. But if you are indeed sitting across the fence between AS and NT, I have a hypothesis.

Imagine a scenario in which you may operate your PC only with keyboard which does have 15% of its keys malfunctioning. They are completely random and scattered across whole keyboard, some not working at all, others working from time to time, maybe there are even ones which produce input of random character on each press.

In theory it is "hey, 85% of my keyboard is working, I should manage somehow".

In reality it is completely derailing your attempts at using the keyboard for normal tasks like typing. Even chat via messenger and posting tweets gets complicated and when it comes to working with this keyboard, just forget it.

First thing you can do to get around this is to open up a characters table and copy ones which are affected each time you need to use them. But this is a slow process, taking way more effort and time. So what can you do? Go one step further and configure macros which will produce a desired character with a combination of several keys. You need to learn them, though, which takes time. Eventually, you'll achieve a proficiency in using macros that will allow you to type using them without even thinking about it that much, but the issue of input delay still persist to some degree - moving your fingers to hit several keys at once will never be as fast and convenient as simply pressing one key, which also leaves less room for error.

So you won't ever type as fast as you could if the keyboard were fully working. You will never type as fast as a person with similar skill level, but equipped with working keyboard.

You would rather have a fully working keyboard.

Now, hypothetically, it is possible to create a software and even language in which the 85% of working keys would be considered as normal input and the remaining 15% would be never used. But it is not realistic to expect everyone with working keyboards shifting to such model.

Best you can hope for is that they'll understand why you type your emails, messages etc. so slow, after you tell them about your keyboard problem.

You can either accept that there's nothing further to be done with the keyboard itself and that you can only give your skill of using macros further polish, knowing fully that it will always affect your typing performance.

You can set up your PC in a way that doesn't require the 15% of keys to function efficiently and use characters represented by them only when you need to contact with outside world.

Or you can wake up every morning, sit down to do some job and hate your keyboard, asking yourself why you need to struggle so much.

What if you did not know 25% of your keyboard was not working?

You would notice that something is off eventually, when your input wouldn't produce desired outcome and comparing things you've written to what others wrote with their keyboards. You could not have a knowledge to determine the root cause of the issue, but it would became clear if you would get keyboard checked by technician.

This sounds dangerous. I don't think it's a good idea. That's kind of like saying, maybe someone with Down Syndrome can try to be a little less Down Syndrome and more abled.

I've actually had a malfunctioning keyboard. It does hinder you. But not completely. Slows you down.

As far as a metaphor, neuroplasticity of the brain, rewiring takes place ,naturally, when ever there is disruption.
The brain is constantly changing, adapting.

And Jakki, not knowing you're out of sync with other people, does mean, you likely not to fix your problems, only make things worse. Or fix, them after it's too late to do any good.
Or likely never fix them at all.
Alot of people in prison, cause nobody, set them straight, at an early age, no positive role models, stable environments.

I heard one time, alot of people in prison are not psychopathic*1,( truly evil and corrupt individuals make up a very small %,) but autistic, and other less problematic personality disorders, bipolar etc. % of ASD is supposedly higher than expected*2.
I imagine many unfortunate outcomes because of lack of realization.
That's why it's important to be diagnosed early, therefore intervention can help you adapt better.
But I don't think progressing to NT functioning is attainable, only something that can pass for it, to the untrained eye.


Supporting studies to these claims.Oh look How academic, I'm getting now. Citations!
*1 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/H ... e26d0626ca
*2 https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i3028

A great way to put it.

I agree it's not without danger, but handled with due care I think it can be worth trying. I think it's important to think about whatever trait you're looking to fight, and to consider the likely strain it could cause, and the risks associated with failure. For example, I can't see any harm in trying to get into the habit of occasionally asking "Is that thought too black-and-white?" I don't see much danger in sometimes giving myself a bit more time to recapture a seemingly lost short-term memory.

Before I was diagnosed, I did a personality questionnaire and among the results were low self-esteem and introversion. I didn't like that, so I went into a public bar where I knew nobody and struck up a conversation with some of the people there, just to prove a point. It worked. I don't think I'd have ever tried the experiment if I'd already been diagnosed. Ever since my diagnosis I've felt rather demoralised about my social abilities because it's so often said that ASD is hard-wired and pretty much immutable, and that we tend to be seen by society as rather weird and inferior. I don't like these memes that say "there's no such word as can't, you can achieve anything," because it's only a half-truth that could set people up for spectacular failure, but I think they can work in cases where a person is underestimating their own abilities, and a diagnosed Aspie might well be doing that. I think it's just a matter of doing a risk assessment before taking any big plunges.

@ the prisoner : the following two statements that you typed,sound almost oxymoronic:

As far as a metaphor, neuroplasticity of the brain, rewiring takes place ,naturally, when ever there is disruption.
The brain is constantly changing, adapting.

And Jakki, not knowing you're out of sync with other people, does mean, you likely not to fix your problems, only make things worse. Or fix, them after it's too late to do any good.
Or likely never fix them at all.

You wrote about neuroplasticity and adaptability, which can be a expected process .but being out of sync with other people , Might give rise to increased adaptability to achieve desired outcomes .Not seeing a missing key on a keyboard might cause one to use different words of similiar meaning to achieve, what you are trying to convey when you write. Thereby a work around for the same outcome regardless of missing keys on the keyboard.
It does have to do with ones perception of a problem.and perhaps that neuroplasticity can relate to ones creativity , in order to achieve a desired outcome ..

Actually, neuroplasticity is greatly overrated. In case of adults, past age of 25, it is very limited. A good example is Rasmussen's encephalitis, a potentially life-threatening brain inflammatory disease. As its causes are unknown, thus far, the most widespread form of "treatment" is hemispherectomy - complete removal of affected hemisphere or disconnecting it from the rest of the brain to prevent spreading of the inflammation. It is also performed in severe cases of drug-resistant epilepsy, where it is a last resort procedure to give an individual a chance for better quality of life. Yes, sometimes not having a whole hemisphere is better than enduring life-threatening seizures.

Procedure performed on children and teenagers brings way less negative results than in adults. Juvenile brains can quickly adapt and motor functions, language processing and so on are quite often overtaken by another hemisphere. In fact, in some patients the procedure has actually enhanced their intellect and psychological development rate. There are know examples of such children growing into adults who graduate universities and live successful, normal lives with no impairment of cognitive functioning or overall intelligence.

In case of adult patients who underwent hemispherectomy, the prognosis is not as positive. If a hemisphere in which their language centre is located needs to be disconnected, it may take them decades to get to a very basic level. Motor functions can be severely impaired and many will never walk without aid. There is progress in the affected skills post-surgery, but it is far slower and less considerable than in juvenile patients.

Another good example are neurodegenerative diseases which damage brain cells very slowly, over decades even. The condition of affected people gets gradually worse - even with some degree of neuroplasticity, the brain can only thaw, not completely stop, the progress of disease. To put it simply, new neural connections are not formed fast enough to make up for what is lost over time.

Most importantly neuroplasticity does have very little to do with what we are discussing here. Why?

When you lose a part of the brain corresponding to your right-hand movement due to an accident, the brain is developing neural connections to bring the ability for movement back, because nerves connecting into spinal cord are still functioning and they constantly bombard the brain with sensory input. Brain tries to make sense of those signals, but it is trial and error process for neurons: "oh, so this does that and this does that...". This is why rehabilitation exercises are so important - to give the brain intense, streamlined and consistent input to train it.

The issue with skills you are discussing here is that they aren't related to such basic functions of the brain. I mean, the really primitive ones which are present in all living organism which posses even quasi-brain structures of neurons.

In most ASD individuals, these skills have not developed at juvenile stage not because of environmental factors. I had the same exposure to social situations as my peers and yet, I have Asperger's an they do not. There's no amount of sensory input related to social situations you can flood your brain with in adult life, to make it developing what has not developed during childhood.

Furthermore, when training these skills you are using conscious process, using the intelligence - so it is like emulation, in a way. You may develop a habit of looking people in the eyes using reasoning "I should look people in the eyes when speaking with them", but you cannot hard-wire it into your brain to function subconsciously, without involving any thought process, like it does work in NT people. Your brain doesn't need to truly adapt to it, because your conscious thought process handles it on a higher level. It will always be dependent on your "software layer" and thus, prone to more errors than in NT people.

If neuroplasticity would work like some of you think, everyone would have equal opportunity to become a genius level intellect with top-grade skills at everything. But you cannot "fake" your way up to the top by really wanting to become good at something. If you aren't naturally gifted with predisposition for something, you will never achieve what those who are can in given area. You cannot train your brain to become a brilliant mathematician or painter. It is something what you either have or do not.

And you won't ever be able to train your brain to function like one of NT person. You may learn some skills and even get decent proficiency at them, but your brain will still work the same and doing things "NT-way" will always feel unnatural and "off" for you.

Effectively, the thing you are discussing here is nothing else than masking. Yes, you can get good at masking. But it is still "faking" being a NT person.

To use a parallel from computer sciences, you are running these things in "software" rather by using an instruction set built-in to your "hardware". This affect the performance in negative way. It is like trying to run Quake on 486 processor back in the 90's - no matter how you overclock the chip, no matter how many Mhz you have the core running at, it will still be a slow crawling slideshow compared to running it on Pentium, which actually does have more advanced architecture in many areas and offers broader instructions set the game takes an advantage of.

When I click on that link, I get an error message saying, "This blog is open to invited readers only."

If you want us to read it, you need to change the settings on your blog to make it viewable by the general public.

Neuroplasticity is what happens on the cellular level of the synapses. That's a unconsious process, like hair or nails growing.

Adaptability is both unconscious and partially conscious.
As far you can consciously adapt to things, thats debatable.
Depending n whatever neurological condition you have, there are going to be limits imposed on the extent one can adapt on a behavioral level.
Environment, Behavior, thinking, and underlying structures in brain are all interconnected.
So...assuming a person is close enough to NT to begin with,
With early enough intervention, they may be able to learn behaviors, or thinking patterns, which effectively adapt them towards society.
Where they appear normal.
Nueroplasticity, means the brain function ability to be flexible,well into old age.
As long as you're not too impaired,or deviate from from NT.
The brain will always rewire itself, rewire around damaged areas, and change it's structures, when external stimuli forces it to do so.

I think being out of sync, means more chance of trouble, socially, a spiral downwards, into further error.
With mostly negative outcomes.
It's a complex subject.
And words are imprecise.